Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Monday August 27, 2012 @05:38PM
from the your-definition-of-free-isn't-the-right-one dept.

TheSilentNumber writes "A member of Students for Free Culture has just published a thorough and detailed post calling for the retirement of the non-free clauses, NoDerivatives (ND) and NonCommercial (NC). They state, 'The NC and ND clauses not only depend on, but also feed misguided notions about their purpose and function.' and that 'Instead of wasting effort maintaining and explaining a wider set of conflicting licenses, Creative Commons as an organization should focus on providing better and more consistent support for the licenses that really make sense.'"
Note that the opinions expressed are of the author alone and not necessarily the entire organization. More info on the process of revising the CC licenses.

One of the worrying things about using CC material is: What is a derivative work?

This matters for the viral/copyleft CC-SA (CC Share and Share Alike) license.

For example, if you have a web page, and you either excerpt or publish a full Wikipedia article, along with your other content, have you just given permission to people to use your content from that webpage?

Is the virality of the CC-SA limited just to the part which you excerpt, or the whole webpage, or your whole website?

I.e., you include some CC-SA material, and now your entire website is considered a "work", and it's a derivative. What if you also have GPL and GFDL stuff in the mix? Which license wins?

"have you just given permission to people to use your content from that webpage?" -- All creative commons licenses require you to post a notice that the covered material is licensed under X license (where X can be CC-BY-SA, or CC-BY, etc), and that such a statement must be made in a manner 'appropriate to the medium' or some such language. If you had a webpage, that would presumably require a statement and a link to the text of the license. If you fail to do that, you are in violation of the license and could be sued for copyright infringement. (At which point, you could claim fair use as your defense)

The fact that it's a CC work would only get you out of the damages of misusing it [...] The damage to your reputation from losing the suit and the money you'd have to pay defending yourself would be more than enough to keep most folks honest.

Damage to your reputation? What world do you live in? No one outside academia cares about anything but the monetary damages. In which case...

Well...

Sure! Insofar as I'd call you an idiot for bothering to defend yourself against a no-penalty infringement suit.

And perhaps they're not so nice and decide to ask for statutory damages.

... in parts of the world where the justice system is punitive, and statutory damages exist.

Most of the world would follow the Ius Commune principle that no one should benefit from a crime -- neither the defendant nor the plaintiff -- and damages are limited to actual damages and not a single kopek more.

So, in other words, when I get caught stealing, all I have to do is return what I stole? Then I can try again with no negative effects? Wow, that's an awesome system for evil people. No open fist to the head to discourage further stealing?

You get sentencing that's meant to be preventative, rehabilitative and deterring, not punitive.I.e. the sentencing is meant to prevent harm to others until you are ready to re-join society as a productive member, i.e. are rehabilitated, and also deter others from doing the same.

Sentencing only works as a deterrence up to a certain point - it's not like anyone is going to say "oh, they've increased the sentencing so if I rob a bank I get 25 years instead of 20, so I'll change my mind and be a good boy".And s

IANAL, but derivative work has a specific meaning and the web page wouldn't be considered a derivative work just by including an image from a CC-ND source. If you're using text and mixing it in with other text that would likely be derivative and as such be a violation. Although that depends upon how exactly you're using the text, you can as always use it as a citation subject to the usual rules.

I think the licenses should stay, they're not as free as opening them up for any and all use, but those licenses a

For example, if you have a web page, and you either excerpt or publish a full Wikipedia article, along with your other content, have you just given permission to people to use your content from that webpage?

No.

Is the virality of the CC-SA limited just to the part which you excerpt,

Yes.

or the whole webpage,

No.

or your whole website?

No.

I.e., you include some CC-SA material, and now your entire website is considered a "work", and it's a derivative.

What if I take some CC-SA poem and put it to a tune of my own penning, and commercially publish that song (either as sheet music, or recorded)? Is it just the lyrics I have to share-alike, or the whole song?

And if I mix some CC-SA samples into a track that I sell commercially? Is it just those samples I have to share alike, or my whole song?

As with any licence, I suppose, it is whatever you label with that licence that it becomes. A single thing (e.g. website, software program, etc.) can include parts that consists of multiple licences, which means the whole 'thing' cannot become one licence, unless altering one of its 'sub' licences does not violate that licence.

On Wikipedia, for instance, the software, i.e. MediaWiki (both server side and the default skins) is GPL, but the content (e.g. text, custom CSS, images, etc.) is CC-SA as you correctly noted. Unless, of course, wherever stated (a lot of images have a variety of licences).

Essentially, no licence wins, because if they cannot be converted to one another, your website has to be released under several licences. However, in general terms, a website appears under one licence, unless noted otherwise. As such, you may wish to include with your Wikipedia excerpt that it is CC-SA content.

I have no idea how much sense this post made, but essentially, it is not uncommon for a multitude of content to have a multitude of licences, even if within the same 'scope'/website/etc.

Sorry to be pedantic, but the English language Wikipedia uses the CC-BY-SA license. The BY bit's important as it requires attribution. I'm not sure about other languages but the German and Scots version also seem to use the same license.

First, if you need actual legal advice to this effect, consult a lawyer.

If you excerpt content within the restrictions of Fair Use, a license is not required. So no, your content is still yours.

Creating a work which is derivative of multiple other works means you need a license to each work. If those licenses are incompatible, you will, obviously, be committing copyright infringement. If one part is GPL, and another part has a license saying "you cannot show anyone your code", you can choo

One of the worrying things about using CC material is: What is a derivative work?

That is an excellent question and one that directly relates to my use of the 'NC' licence. When releasing educational materials I'm happy with everyone getting to use them for free and sharing them with others but I do not want to see them get incorporated into a text book or used as supporting material for a textbook which publishers are charging students obscene prices for (especially as those prices are one of the primary motivations for making the material in the first place!).

While you might be able to argue that a textbook which incorporates pages of text and/or questions is a derivative work many publishers now offer flexible publishing options where you can pick and choose what chapters and sections of a book are included for your course. In such a case does all the book count as a derivative work or just the sections or chapters where they use CC content adapted to the book?

While the term 'non-commercial' might be ambiguous so is the term 'derivative works' so if ambiguity is an argument to drop the term both should be dropped. Personally I thing the argument for dropping the 'NC' clause is more to do with the author's political persuasions than any other argument given. I think keeping the option to give us a choice is important. Looking at open source there is clear support for both BSD-like and GPL-like licences. What is nice with CC is that it accommodates both camps under one umbrella. If they drop the 'NC' I predict a licence fork to fix the omission.

I personally don't want the NC license gone. I currently release photos several places, my landscapes and random stuff is CC-ND-NC and my free stock is CC-NC with a request for sending my account a link of finished work. I don't see how removing the non-commercial clauses would be in any way shape or form beneficial.

Ditching the NC would mean I would have to use some other license OR come up with my own so people can't just take my stuff and give attribution to make money off of my work ( currently they ha

Seems rather silly to me, it is a licence, or it isn't If it is then it can be used for as long as people see fit to use it.Creating another licence minus the bits that some people think are not suitable for their needs is fine too. The original licence is still there and can be used. Licence your work as you see fit. It's your work and you choose how it should be distributed.

It seems a bit weasley to attempt to piggy back a different licence on the back of an existing widely known and widely used successfu

I think you should stop playing one on the Internet. It's not required to be a lawyer to have an opinion, but it doesn't hurt to learn atleast the basics.

There's a long string of court-cases that together define derivative work. Like always in life, grey areas exist, it's possible to create a new work in such a way that it's unknown whether a court would consider it a derivative or not, but none of your examples fall in that category.

I like using NC for images, and I think people are a lot more likely to release their images under this (without this clause they may be less likely release them as CC at all, and just keep them closed).

Then you're missing the point of Wikipedia. It's not the site, it's the collection of human knowledge that you can distribute, sell, use and reprint. If you put NC works on Wikipedia, you'd essentially enrich the site, but this won't benefit the encyclopedia. All you'd achieve is make it impossible for someone to print and sell Wikipedia article with your image in it.

As for your exaggerated example with Monstanto, don't worry, they have enough money to make photographs for themselves, and if they do take yo

And yes, you are absolutely correct. Most artists are OK with free as in beer, but not so OK with free as in speech. Especially when the entity that's most likely to capitalize on the work is probably going to be a large corporation.

And why shouldn't they be pissed? Look at that story a couple of weeks back about that model who allowed herself to be photographed for a car ad (Volvo I believe) and the next thing she knows is her picture is showing up on other ads making her sound like a call girl.

There is a good reason why so many support NC, because that way if a corp wants to use their image they have to contact them and get permission or get sued.

A separate performance of your song is not a derivative. As soon as you release your recorded music product publicly, a compulsory license applies to it: That is, anyone can perform that piece publicly and commercially without asking your permission. Of course, a fixed fee is meant to be paid after said public commercial performance, but only if you or some law enforcement agent happens to catch the act.
If your original recorded performance is performed by someone else and/or re-recorded/re-envisioned/rem

If I say, make an art asset and post it to say, OpenGameArt, I have a choice of options.

I can list it as one of the CC licenses, for instance, or even under a derivative of the GPL.

Personally, I am a fan of CC:SA. I don't mind a small time person using that asset to make a game. That's why I donated it in the first place. That does not mean I want say, Zygna to go "Oh, art assets? FOR FREE!? OM NOM NOM NOM!"

It is this latter one that I feel warrants the "no commercial" verbiage, even today. The tradgedy of the commons happens when the commons is not protected, and happens without fail. Would I care if a small "for profit" project, like is often done with humble bundle used it? Not so much, as long as they gave attribution in 10pt font in the credits or smething. But Zygna? Fuck them.

The problem is that it is a binary on/off situation with commercial use. I would happily give an indie project commercial use rights, but it would be a cold day in hell when a major studio would get it.

If there were some finer granularity, I would use it, but in place of that, "no commercial" is at least a step in the right direction.

CC should craft a NC flavor that says you don't want it used commercially in general but are willing to license for free under alternate terms. This would probably be enough to make Zynga skip it while still allowing indie-game-maker to pop you an email.

They already have that. It's called "NC". Surely you'll say "No, NC doesn't imply that"... but that's because people are myopic.

ANY property can be licensed under an alternate license. You just have to contact the property owner.

weird_w wants to license it in general under NC to prevent the general case of abuse, and to prevent abuse by entities he doesn't like... great.

If a small shop still wants to use the work, they already have a built-in remedy: contact weird_w and ask him for the same work under an alternate and/or negotiated license (closed/for-pay, closed/for-free, open, etc.). There's nothing about distributing _YOUR_ work under the GPL or CC or any other _general_ license that says you can't also simultaneously distribute _YOUR_ work under another license.

It's your work. Do you want you want. Distribute it under a GPL or OGL variant to people who's last name starts with A-M, and distribute it under CC-SA to people who's last names start with N-Y, and distribute it under CC-NC to people who's last names start with Z.

Or, distribute it under CC-NC to companies named BANDERSNATCH, and distribute it under CC-SA to everyone else.

It MIGHT make it harder to defend your property in court (I'm not a lawyer, consult one), but there have, historically, been lots of companies that distribute their work under multiple licenses. The first one that comes to mind is the old Ghostscript, which was under one license for the latest and greatest, and then a different license for older versions. Or FUDGE, which (at least for a while) was under an artist's license OR the OGL (your choice).

Yeah, I understand that you could always figure out alternate licensing terms with the author. I meant a flavor of NC that explicitly claims that the author is open to alternate licensing terms if this is NC is the only reason you couldn't use the asset.

The point here is that I don't want money for the work. I just want to ensure that it doesn't get used in certain ways. Preventing me from having that ability will remove any incentive for me to release it in the first place. I don't make art for money. I make art for enjoyment. I get negative enjoyment from seeing something I drew or modeled sold to me, or used in advertisements I disaprove of.

It isn't that I get all uppity when somebody uses or modifies my work. If that were the case, I wouldn't even thin

"Intellectual Property" it's a legal term for a very broad category of protections. Like patents, copyrighted works, trademarks. Since we are talking here about copyrighted works, you can't just use the term IP. Also the common definition of property do not covers IP. You can't just say "property" if you are mean "intellectual property".

Anyone who does that wants only one: to remove the distinction between real property and "intellectual property". "intellectual property" is very different from a property.

It is this latter one that I feel warrants the "no commercial" verbiage, even today.

Zinga is big enough, they can take care of themselves and just recreate the artwork. The problems actually comes more from the smaller developers, who will grab "free" things from the web, use them in their iPhone apps and then sell them on the AppStore without ever giving to much considerations about the license. While I haven't yet used NC due to all problems it will cause with Linux distributions, that kind of stuff happened to me often enough to seriously consider it. It wouldn't completely stop it, but

The NC clause is vague and survives entirely on two even more misinformed ideas. First is rightsholders’ fear of giving up their copy monopolies on commercial use, but what would be considered commercial use is necessarily ambiguous. Is distributing the file on a website which profits from ads a commercial use? Where is the line drawn between commercial and non-commercial use? In the end, it really isn’t.

Essentially the argument is "because there are some instances where commercial use is not w

The NC version of the license is the only one I would ever willingly use, and that's coming from someone who is very familiar with copyright law. There's no misinformation involved. It simply doesn't bother me whether the definition of commercial use is precisely defined or vague, and honestly, I'd prefer that it be deliberately vague. If you are anywhere near that line, you should ask for permission. If you aren't anywhere near that line, you don't have to.

The only situation where it shouldn't be obvious would be posting something on a website on which you also sell ads. My rule on that is pretty simple: if you are an individual and those ads are basically intended to cover your bandwidth bill, you're fine. If you're a company or other organization, or if you are an individual who is making a living off of ad revenue, you're clearly on the other side of that line. If you're worried, ask.

You don't seem to get what is vague. Commercial uses aplenty, but there exist *no* distinctly noncommercial uses of work. I never get why people don't see this. If you keep NC, you might as well just stick to normal copyright, as nobody will legally be allowed to use it for any reason with an NC clause (except personal use, which is already fine with normal copyright). For instance: any use by an organization like a charity is almost certainly commercial in nature if you read to the letter of the law. Putti

That's patently false. Creating a work that is used in a classroom for free is noncommercial. In fact, as long as you aren't charging people for the use of the work (or a derivative work) - it is clearly non commercial.

The ND clause survives on the idea that rightsholders would not otherwise be able protect their reputation or preserve the integrity of their work, but all these fears about allowing derivatives are either permitted by fair use anyway or already protected by free licenses.

Counterexamples:

1. I write an opinion piece for my local paper on why G.W. Bush was the worst US president in history. Under any free license, someone else can write a revised version in which my opinions are all changed, then distribute it with attribution to me and the reviser. Fair use doesn't allow this. An ND license does what I want, which is to prevent this misrepresentation of my opinions.

2. Alice Randall wrote a book called The Wind Done Gone using the setting and characters of Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell's estate sued Randall and won. If Gone With the Wind had been distributed under an ND license, this would have been prevented. Under a free license, it would have been allowed. Fair use doesn't allow this use.

3. I make coffee mugs with Harry Potter characters on them and sell them on the internet without paying a royalty to J.K. Rowling. If Rowling had chosen any free license, this would have been allowed. With an NC license, it's prohibited, which is what she wants. It doesn't fall under fair use.

Most importantly, though, is that both clauses do not actually contribute to a shared commons.

Yes, this is blindingly obvious. In all three examples above, the original author had no intention of contributing to a shared commons.

Perhaps the silliest thing of all about this is the belief that people can somehow be prevented from using NC or ND licenses. Nobody can prevent this. The CC organization could "deprecate" them, and this would have absolutely no effect.

> Perhaps the silliest thing of all about this is the belief that people can somehow be prevented from using NC or ND licenses. Nobody can prevent this. The CC organization could "deprecate" them, and this would have absolutely no effect.

The point is that, some people think any Creative Commons license is adding their work to the commons. Whereas NC and ND are not. They are called Creative *Commons*, so either they could change their name or stop promoting licenses that don't add to the commons.

I fail to see how dropping NC/ND types from CC v4.0 would be a benefit.

If the authors would really want a license that amounts to one/both of the NC/ND and there's none to reference on the CC site, they'll specify them expressly; so "hiding" them from the CCv4.0 set of licenses won't bring more "liberty" for the community.

Also, if an author releases the creation with NC/ND clauses, it doesn't make their creation "absolutely non-Commons" - granted, not the same degree of freedom, but neither completely "private".If, for some purposes, somebody needs exceptions (eg distributing Wikipedia on offline media, in communities without internet access), what's wrong with contacting the author to ask for another license, to be granted (or not) on a case by case basis?

In my mind, the request to drop NC/ND from CC is akin to asking the Open Source community to abolish GPL and use only BSD derived licences.

I fail to see how dropping NC/ND types from CC v4.0 would be a benefit.If the authors would really want a license that amounts to one/both of the NC/ND and there's none to reference on the CC site, they'll specify them expressly; so "hiding" them from the CCv4.0 set of licenses won't bring more "liberty" for the community.

Right. Or they'll write their own licenses, which has a couple of big disadvantages: (1) Non-lawyers will write their own licenses and mess up, or people will put things in their license t

I'm one of the guys behind an open source music hardware project (meeblip.com) and strongly against NC/ND restrictions. They exist out of fear and stand counter to the central tenant of open source (*anyone* should be able to study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or a derivative work based on that design).

There is natural conflict in the development process, because after spending hundreds or thousands of hours creating something cool, it's hard to let go. This conflict is especially difficult if you decide that releasing your project as open source is the best way to distribute it and get others to use and extend it. The first knee-jerk reaction is to attempt to retain as much control as you can -- "Yeah, it's open source, but I don't want you using it commercially or as the basis of something else." -- If you follow through with that restriction, you're essentially releasing source code or design files for a closed project. It's open in name only.

Once you recognize that your biggest fear is actually the idea that someone will take your idea and do a better (or more successful) job at it than you have, you can begin to step forward. The first step is to understand that if you have a really good idea, someone will clone it. In fact, it's likely that 15 people will clone it. And that's good, because they might do a better job and there's nothing from stopping you from incorporating their good ideas into your project (a derivative work of a derivative work!). Whether or not you explicitly grant permission for someone to use your ideas, rest assured that they will. To that end, it makes the most sense to release with a CC Share Alike requirement that ensures that your ideas and their derivatives stay public and accessible to all.

I'm someone who writes and publishes music under CC-NC-SA. Since I'm doing artistic stuff rather than engineering stuff with it, it's possible my perspective is a bit different, but I suspect the argument will apply just as well.

I'm not afraid someone will do it better. I'm afraid that some organization will take what I've given away, copy it, make a token modification, and copyright it, thus turning the work that I made as a gift into something that has a price on it, all without paying me a dime. They might even be able to turn around and issue DMCA takedowns and sue people for performing my work, claiming that they're really performing their version rather than my version. They've now taken free artistic work and made it no longer free. In other words, they aren't really adding any value at all, just taking value from me and from the public and declaring it theirs.

An illustrative case: Pete Seeger took biblical verses and wrote the song Turn, Turn, Turn [wikipedia.org], releasing it into the public domain. Several other folk musicians performed it, and it gained in popularity, and Pete finally recorded it in 1962. In 1965, the Byrds recorded it, and now most people who've heard of the song think that they wrote it originally, and some others think Bob Dylan wrote it. Had Pete Seeger not been a relatively well-known figure, it's quite possible his contribution would have been forgotten entirely.

If somebody wants to take my stuff and use it in a commercial project, releasing it under CC-NC-SA doesn't say they can't do it, it just says that they need to get in touch with me and work out some sort of arrangement. In practical terms, it means that if someone else wants to sing my song among friends or something, they can just do it, but if somebody wants to put it on an album or book or something like that, we need to talk about it.

No - I want non-commercial use to be freely available to anyone who wants it, and commercial use to be restricted to those who pay for it. Under CC-NC, for instance, if a church choir wants to sing my stuff on a Sunday morning, they can download and print off copies and sing it without worrying about copyright, which they can't do if it's under normal copyright. If a folk singer gets up and sings one of my songs in a coffeeshop open mike night, that's A-OK, but if Bruce Springsteen performs it in an arena t

I'm not afraid someone will do it better. I'm afraid that some organization will take what I've given away, copy it, make a token modification, and copyright it, thus turning the work that I made as a gift into something that has a price on it, all without paying me a dime. They might even be able to turn around and issue DMCA takedowns and sue people for performing my work, claiming that they're really performing their version rather than my version. They've now taken free artistic work and made it no longer free. In other words, they aren't really adding any value at all, just taking value from me and from the public and declaring it theirs.

DMCA takedown notices must have a statement, under the penalty of perjury, that you represent the copyright owner. Unless your company rep/lawyer wants to go to jail, you are talking about a very unlikely scenario.

An illustrative case: Pete Seeger took biblical verses and wrote the song Turn, Turn, Turn [wikipedia.org], releasing it into the public domain. Several other folk musicians performed it, and it gained in popularity, and Pete finally recorded it in 1962. In 1965, the Byrds recorded it, and now most people who've heard of the song think that they wrote it originally, and some others think Bob Dylan wrote it. Had Pete Seeger not been a relatively well-known figure, it's quite possible his contribution would have been forgotten entirely.

So what? If you want to be attributed, don't give it to the public domain. That's what CC-BY licenses are for, which of course didn't exist back then.

DMCA takedown notices must have a statement, under the penalty of perjury, that you represent the copyright owner.

But they do have copyright, on their version of my song, which is somewhat different from mine. The thing is, if somebody besides me and them record a performance of it, who's song is that, mine or theirs? What if the performer put my notes to their modified lyrics, or vice versa?

I'm one of the guys behind an open source music hardware project (meeblip.com) and strongly against NC/ND restrictions. They exist out of fear and stand counter to the central tenant of open source (*anyone* should be able to study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or a derivative work based on that design).

Sorry,

The key assumption in your argumentation: "open source software/hardware" and "open artistic creation" are identical. I assert that there's a fundamental difference between the two:

1. software/hardware is an engineering problem, and the results can be improved, polished, maintained over time in sync with technological advances.

2. By contrast, an artistic creation is meant to transmit/produce emotions/feelings/sensations etc... For some creations, the author may feel that any change in the expression would alter too much the intentions s/he had when creating it Say whatever one may, no-one - maybe not even the author - can "improve" on a specific artistic creation

Yes, you can try to use an existing creation to build something equally appealing to the people, but in doing so you are going to dilute the original authors intentions (if not outright destroying [nydailynews.com] them entirely).

Pink Floyd's attorney Robert Howe describes the band's albums as "seamless pieces." No-one who's heard 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' would quibble with that.

You know, I do agree with that and not only in respect with The Dark side of the moon.

My opinion is: the "open source" or "closed license" character for an artistic creation is irrelevant - the creator's wish is to be respected. Anything else would show a lack of respect for the original creative act, which I would say is more dangerous for society than the potential loss of another derivative creation.

You charge $149.95 for your hardware don't you? Since you don't give your hardware away for free, then tell me why any content creator should be effectively forced give away their music or poetry or prose or photographs for free for you to use in your non-free software/hardware bundle? Since when did a CC license become a "Public Domain" license in your mind?

In open source there is a giving of equal value. One person gives this and another gives that and soon there is a whole ecosystem-- But all things bei

(eg distributing Wikipedia on offline media, in communities without internet access), what's wrong with contacting the author to ask for another license, to be granted (or not) on a case by case basis?

Can you think of any practical way to ask the thousand of contributors of Wikipedia for an exception?

In my mind, the request to drop NC/ND from CC is akin to asking the Open Source community to abolish GPL and use only BSD derived licences.

No it is not. It is akin to abolish any field-of-use terms [wikipedia.org] in the GPL or the BSD (which they not have). NC and ND basically say: That work is free but only if you are not using it for Xxxx and Zzzz. Which means it is not free at all.

(eg distributing Wikipedia on offline media, in communities without internet access), what's wrong with contacting the author to ask for another license, to be granted (or not) on a case by case basis?

Can you think of any practical way to ask the thousand of contributors of Wikipedia for an exception?

Well... though luck... what would you find preferable:
1. not have a Wikipedia at all (not even online) because a less restrictive license would not have attracted the same participation
2. have an online version and no offline version.

Before jumping up with the accusation of "false dichotomy", note that I am not excluding
a. an attempt to still try to "negotiate" a more liberal distribution license with Wikipedia as an organisation... It may or may not be successful... but, as the "SOPA blackout protest"

The text of Wikipedia is copyrighted (automatically, under the Berne Convention) by Wikipedia editors and contributors and is formally licensed to the public under one or several liberal licenses. Most of Wikipedia's text and many of its images are co-licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)

Re-use of non-text media

Where not otherwise noted, non-text media files are available under various free culture licenses, consistent with the Wikimedia Foundation Licensing Policy. Please view the media description page for details about the license of any specific media file.

Free Content License
A license which meets the terms of the Definition of Free Cultural Works specific to licenses, as can be found at http://freedomdefined.org/Definition [freedomdefined.org] version 1.0.

To ensure the graceful functioning of this ecosystem, works of authorship should be free, and by freedom we mean:

the freedom to use the work and enjoy the benefits of using it
the freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it
the freedom to make and redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expression
the freedom to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative works

In my mind, the request to drop NC/ND from CC is akin to asking the Open Source community to abolish GPL and use only BSD derived licences.

The GPL allows both commercial distribution and derivative works, so that's not a correct analogy. No-Derivatives is more like that Microsoft Shared Source licence that lets you look at the code but not change it, Share-Alike would be comparable to the GPL, and as far as I know there is no mainstream Free Software license that corresponds to Non-Commercial. BSD corresponds more or less to CC-BY I'd say.

Of course, this is all rough correspondences, and it's not clear that the same arguments apply to software

I fail to see how dropping NC/ND types from CC v4.0 would be a benefit.

The idea behind the Commons is that you have a set of resources that anyone can use at his or her convenience. In the digital realm, this refers to the set of works that can be freely distributed, modified, and you are allowed to create any service based upon them. This realm, lets call it the "free world", is huge: it includes Wikipedia, Free Software, and a plethora of other projects. The beauty is that you can pretty much take any parts of the existing free world to create something new, enriching the Co

I want CC No Commercial (NC) and CC No Derivatives (ND) clauses removed because they don't really support free. Works don't enrich the commons unless you can do whatever you want with them. Also, the NC clause should be eliminated because it is really hard to define commercial. Does commercial mean you can't share a file on a website that has ads?

My opinion is that a little free is better than not free. I should be able to donate my work to the commons without expecting to see it on a billboard. Which has actually happened. In terms of the commercial example, I think we can all judge when things move over the line from donation based to blatantly commercial. The good news is that it is up to me as a rights holder to enforce the license. I can allow uses of my file in ad supported web sites, but object to my song being used in a local TV ad. Yes, there are ambiguities in everything. That's life.

If you object to these licenses, don't use 'em. Or anything with them.

Instead of wasting effort maintaining and explaining a wider set of conflicting licenses, Creative Commons as an organization should focus on providing better and more consistent support for the licenses that really make sense.

"Instead of wasting effort maintaining and explaining" -- Presuming the conclusion. You are supposed to convince us why it's wasted effort, not just label it such.

"a wider set of conflicting licenses" -- the licenses don't conflict just to conflict but rather because they embody different and incompatible ways of licensing the same work.

"Creative Common as an organization" -- as opposed to Creative Commons as a giant lizard-robot, very important.

"should focus on providing better and more consistent support" -- they don't provide good and consistent support? Since when?!

" for the licenses that really make sense" -- where 'really' here is a synonym for 'to me' because we know that no content creator could possibly want to use a license whose terms conflict with the ones that I would chose.

Creative Commons isn't intended to be a free license-we have the GPL, BSD license etc for that. It's intended to be a license that supports distribution of creative works while preserving certain rights. It's also intended to be user-friendly for both parties. It's not supposed to be one of the more politically-oriented licenses.

Also: You can't 'retire' a license. It's a legal agreement, a piece of text. A CC license can't be retired anymore than a book can be retired.

Quite a few comments from artists(?) that want to share their work but at the same time do not want to share their works. So what do you want, to share or not to share?

I'm a software developer and any ND or NC license is useless for me.What is a derivation? If I take your art (like an icon) and re-size it or use a different color, ups can't do, because it is a derivation and ND don't allow it.What is commercial? I develop a free open source tool and release it on my site, but the site have ads from Google,

I think I'm not the only one who just skips any ND or NC licenses. Is it what you want? Why to share your work in the first place?

Maybe because I want to showcase my work, but I don't want to let you just go and use that code as the heart of your own work. If you want to do that, if you want to take my work as the basis for building something of your own and profiting from it? Come talk to me and we'll negotiate how many dollars you'll pay me for the rights to do what you need to do. You're even getting a

But why are you choosing the CC license to show your work? The idea of the CC license and the Creative Commons is to encourage sharing as I quoted from their own site. If you are not intend to share your work, then just don't use any license. Then your work is protected by copyright and anyone can see but not touch it.

Yes I can compare the GPL and the BSD to the CC license. Because the situation is almost the same. You can compare a developer with an author of a book. He faces the same problems about compen

Its called "contact the artist" because, despite the fact that you and others try to make this an either/or its really not. I mean if I publish a picture of me and my boys at the beach under an NC license and you want to use it in some little project, even one that you may make a couple of bucks off of? Then I'm sure that if you contacted me I'd have no problem, and it would take you maybe a few minutes to whip off an email and a few minutes to read my reply. hell I'd even give you my number and we could ha

You are using red-herrings yourself. Why are you sharing your private pictures with a CC license in the first place? Why not just use no license at all and be protected by copyright? There is no point in using a CC-ND/NC if you are not want to share in the first place. Just use no license.

I'm a software developer and let me say that most software and libraries are intended to be used as-is. With the hundred libraries I have used not once I have modified the code. Libraries and applications are most used lik

Say, I publish a book under my own name. I don't care if people reproduce it on their websites, and I don't care if commercial enterprises included it into their own collections. Hey, it's not the money I'm after, so they can sell it too, if they want. What I do care about however, is that nobody comes and starts modifying (adding to, modifying or deleting from) that text... because my name and reputation are associated with it. That's what ND is for. Even if CC removed ND from its list of options, nothing prevents me from releasing said book under an ND-like condition nonetheless.

Say, I publish a book under my own name. I don't care if people reproduce it on their websites, and I don't care if commercial enterprises included it into their own collections. Hey, it's not the money I'm after, so they can sell it too, if they want. What I do care about however, is that nobody comes and starts modifying (adding to, modifying or deleting from) that text... because my name and reputation are associated with it.

You are free to include a mark such as a publisher's name to indicate that this is the original version and prevent its misuse using trademark law. Heck, even well-respected scientific journals such as PloS ONE or Phys. Rev. X use CC-BY.

I found the article incredibly repetative and wishy washy and I think the author needs to go back to critical thinking class. It seems boil down to anybody who wants NC,ND is mistaken and doesn't understand creative commons. Other than pointing out the ambiguities on NC, it really doesn't justify the point of view other than "I'm right, you are wrong" with vague references to "outdated business models". More importantly, the author of the articl never attempts to address the uses cases intended by these clauses. One use case is that an owner of copyright wants to make it available to others, but does not want it modified (ND). If I put a photo up of my nephew and I want my family and friends (and family friends) to be able to share it amonst themselves, including with friends I don't know, CC makes a lot of sense. ND means that you don't get to use my nephews photo in your latest LOLimage and NC means some company doesn't get to use it in the ad campaign. And if you follow some of the groups on flickr, you find that photos are being routinely appriated for advertising use.

In the end, if the ND and NC clauses are struck from CCv4.0, people like me will simply stay with CCv3.0, or fork a new CC2v4.0

I tried to post the following comment on their blog but it didn't seem to want to take it---

I agree that culture should be free but I disagree that the NC and ND should be disallowed. Why?

As a singer / songwriter of non-mainstream works I have no problem releasing those works with a CC license as long as it is not released commercially. Why not? Explain why I as a content creator should allow corporate entities to reap a profit from my creativity with a "free license" when I have been excluded from the market by them? Why should I support monopolists that care only for profits and not for culture or cultural heritage?

The entertainment companies are not the friends of human culture except as far as it provides a profit center -- therefore the non-commercial license is an option for me. I favor shared culture but not the trend toward the theft of human culture by "corporate entities" who see only profits and exclusive property not art. Also why should I as an artist want to support those that punish listeners who do not "pay the medicorpse" for work the mediacorpse never created?

You are mistaken that NC is counter-intuitive. It is a perfect means for a content creator to thumb their noses at commercial entities. Why shouldn't I be allowed to say sorry Big 5 Record Companies but you cannot make a profit from my work? When the IP monsters roll back the copyright laws they paid for to reasonable limits [Life + 75 years is not reasonable - 50 total years is].

A non-commercial license allows the recording and performance but without corporate entities using my work to make a profit. With an NC license the works could be free for cultural purposes -- call it protected public domain...

The same kind of argument can be applied to "No Derivatives". An example: What if the content creator creates "anti-holocaust" art and releases it but their is no license option for "no derivatives" and then someone with an opposing view takes the work and turns it into a "pro-holocaust" propaganda?

Creative Commons should be about giving the content creator a full set of options. NC and ND give content creators options. Removing ND and NC would remove options which may be important to some artists that are willing to release their work to the commons. To create a commons with fewer options will make the commons smaller and possibly drive away some which might make important contributions. The bigger the commons the better the commons.

I think including an ND variant is important for works which are polemic rather than purely informational. For example, if some person or group writes a political manifesto, they may want it distributed as widely as possible, and thus allow redistribution and commercial use. They will probably also want their name associated with that manifesto. What they do not want is someone else to take that manifesto, change the text slightly so that it advocates distasteful or diametrically opposed ideas, and then red

The people who want to remove the "non free" clauses do not understand the difference between Art and Code.(of course a program can also be a piece of art, but mostly it "does something").

Non commercial helps people who want to be "outside of the commercial world" or "agree to share for promotion but still want to live from their art" to offer free culture without loosing something that is important for them.

As a Documentary Film Maker, I am glad that any one is watching my films and happy to redistribute them.
But, I don't want TV station taking my hard work and making a profit off them and not giving me a cent.
I also often use footaged owned by large productions houses (As time machines are unavailable, I can't reshoot historic moments), and there clause are pretty standard, that for every dollar I make they want a peice; which, as a film make (that cost to produce films) I need to make money so have no prob

Newsworth? I don't know. But absolutely Awarenessworth! Currently, more and more people are releasing their own music and videos under the CC licenses for our own free enjoyment, and also it's one of the greatest forces we have against the ever increasing stupidity of the big labels.

Which is why the Students for Free Culture wants to make it more daunting for artists to migrate to free licences by making it an 'all or nothing' deal. Brilliant way to shoot everyone in the foot, guys.

Activist movements need some shorthand for shaming idealists who rush the group's goals without consideration for gradual pragmatic change—like a dunce cap, only larger, and with flashing lights.

I guess that would work within the realm of the free culture movement, but I was thinking even more generally. Any cause you can name—environmentalism, multiculturalism, gender equality, whatever—has overeager radicals who don't want (or know how) to balance their vision with public acceptance. They may not even be wrong about what they're talking about (I think a lot more people would agree with RMS in theory than in practice, for example), and yet they can do a horrendous amount of damage to their own public image. It's daunting to imagine how far back society's been set by the misanthropy of overenthusiasm.

Pretend, for a moment, that society has to pick a number on a scale from 0-100. Right now, public opinion on average thinks the number should be around 40, and mainstream media generally considers it acceptable to discuss proposals that involve numbers as low as 25 and as high as 55. Now, suppose there's well-funded group A that thinks this number should be 0, and a well-funded group B that thinks this number should be 80, and both have legitimate and reasonable-sounding arguments for holding their respective position. If group A adopts the moderate approach, they'll advocate for 25. If group B adopts the extremist approach, they'll advocate for 80. If both groups have equally convincing arguments and can get their message out equally, the public opinion will shift not from 40 down to 25 but from 40 to 52, because group B has successfully convinced a significant number of people that it's reasonable and socially acceptable to think that numbers in the 55-80 range are right.

A practical example of this in action: 20 years ago, gay marriage or gay civil union was unthinkable in the US. In general, 'respectable' liberal political groups didn't want to touch the issue at all, because what was considered the range of acceptable opinion was a spectrum from "Ok, the police shouldn't be able to arrest gay people and throw them in jail for being gay" to "Beat 'em up and force them to be straight". But the less respectable gay rights folks kept up the pressure for gay marriage to be legal, as complete extremists and nutjobs for at least a decade. And by doing that, the idea started entering popular culture, and eventually got some political decisions going their way, and now is legal in many places and has the support of over half of Americans.

Absolutely, when progress is hindered, activism, and perhaps of an extreme sort is necessary for any cause. I wish to heap blame on those who would rally prematurely, though, and in doing so endanger their movement. Extremism can be good, but jumping ahead out of turn harms everyone. At this point in the game, we're still convincing people that free culture is socially and economic viable—and this SfFC member is already calling for the CC to take on an exclusionist attitude toward people who are just

Actually I don't think that is what happened with gay people at all. I live in a small church college town in the middle of the bible belt, where you'd think it would be VERY far right on the issue of gays, buts its not, why? Because gay people quit hiding and instead of getting in everyone's face like the extremists simply chose to live their lives, no different than anyone else.

Now nobody says a word about the gal working at the cigarette shop, or the guy that works at the deli,or the dozens of others, they are simply open and make no bones about it one way or another. Its a lot easier to hate some group if you've never (to your knowledge) had any contact with them, its a lot harder when you know you are talking about that nice young man that cuts your hair or the girl waiting on you at your favorite diner.

In the 1990s that was an extremely radical thing to do. Gay people had been mostly closeted up until then, with the exception of neighborhoods like Castro. It also wasn't a safe thing to do: gay people lost their jobs and got beaten or killed or arrested for being gay. And if you ask them, you'll notice that they still don't feel very comfortable engaging in the kinds of public displays of affection that straight couples take for granted.

And if you ask them, you'll notice that they still don't feel very comfortable engaging in the kinds of public displays of affection that straight couples take for granted.

I'm sort of curious about what kinds of "public displays of affection" you are talking about from "straight" people? Minor hand holding and a couple kissing each other before heading off to work? I think there is much more variation between people of different cultures and their attitudes towards public affection than there is between "straight" and "gay" kinds of affection, or for that matter even between different families within those cultures.

Zealotry. Call them by what they are. Zealots. Fanatacism to the point where there is no longer reason. Absolutism.

It's not a matter of vision and acceptance. It's a matter of imposing of The Way It Must Be upon people who don't see things quite the same way (everybody else). There are visions that do not involve the absolute. The Constitution embodies one such vision, the Republic that is the United States being its implementation. Not coincidentally, said vision is slowly being ripped apart by absolutism.

Unfortunately the concept of zeal disparages them for believing in their cause, and is an innate slur against other members of a given movement. A new word, more specific to the idea that they are acting against their own interests, is necessary. 'Radical', in my opinion, has the same problem, since it implies their belief is, again, more essential.

You don't know how right you are friend. I mean if you were a company looking at using and contributing to an Open Source project so you could use the code in some hardware you were working on wouldn't you think twice after RMS named a company by name with an attack clause in the new GPL? I know I would, it makes him look like he is using the license to settle personal scores, which I'd argue he is. Considering how many nasty things he's had to say about Google I wouldn't be surprised if GPL V4 has an "Anti-Androidization" clause in it.

But that is the problem with zealotry in a nutshell, its "You are with me or against me" with no middle ground. Removing the middle ground of ND and NC will simply make that many more shy away from using a CC license and letting us enjoy their work because they won't want to see that work sold or even twisted, like the girl that had her picture taken for a car ad and ended up in magazines half the world away in ads that made her sound like a hooker.

Isn't it funny though how you can change one or two words, here and there, and TFA sounds like a pro corporate speech? I always found it amusing that zealots on either side of a debate use similar enough language that all it would take is a few alterations to turn one into the other, kinda like how you can take all the anti-BSD posts about "stealing" and "theft" and with just a few words make it into a pro *.A.A speech. I always found that kinda interesting, although when you point that out oh boy do the zealots get mad!

The odd thing that I did see RMS doing with his license suite at the Free Software Foundation was to provide an "escape clause" for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation to switch licenses from the GFDL to CC-BY-SA. I felt at the time it would have been better to reform the GFDL instead of switching licenses, but it was an interesting action that they took and shows RMS isn't so fanatical about his principles.

About the only really controversial feature that has been added into a FSF license is the "patent

Fanatic is OK from an external perspective, but I think to be maximally successful the word really needs to be something that can be uttered as an accusation within the group. Something along the lines of hyperopia, perhaps.

I'd suggest maybe replacing ND with "No Censorship", where the content can be edited to add value or context but not to excise undesirable parts.

I disagree. ND is not only about preventing deletion (a.k.a. censorship), it is also needed to prevent vandalism or malicious or outright bad changes in derivations. Suppose for the sake of an example that I wrote a collection of poems and I had some talent in that department (I didn't and I haven't: it's purely theoretical). I would be hugely pissed if some amat

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